Volatile
by Toadflame
Summary: Pre-Independence Day. Roy's temper was going to get him in trouble one day, Ollie knew it. What he didn't know was that it would be sooner instead of later.


**This is a collaborative done between myself and Sylviechic for the month of September, in answer to The Ultimate Collab challenge. This month's prompt: "Violence won't solve a thing. It makes it more challenging to solve, though."**

**Enjoy!**

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><p>Roy threw the masked henchman against the wall. He notched an arrow, then thought better of it, and resulted to punching the goon, instead.<p>

"Who?" Roy growled as another punch connected with the henchman's jaw. The henchman was silent. "Who?" he growled again, the sound more of a shout. The punches kept flying, but the henchman wasn't saying anything.

"Who are you working for?"

That was when Ollie walked in.

The blond archer froze, an expression of shock clear on his face. He rushed to the teenager's side, pulling him away from the now-unconscious henchman. Roy stood, arms crossed, irritation written across his face, as Ollie checked to make sure that the man was still alive. Once Ollie had been assured that he did not have a homicide on his hands, he turned to Roy.

"What were you thinking?" Ollie nearly screamed, furious with the actions of his partner.

"I was thinking that I was going to get some answers." Roy retorted.

"This," Ollie indicated the beaten and bloody man, who was now groaning on the floor, "is not how we get answers!" Struggling to keep his composure, Ollie tried a different approach. "I know it's frustrating. This guy is elusive, careful, and deadly. He's possibly one of the most difficult villains we've ever faced."

"What's your point? That we're just going to sit back while he runs loose?" Roy's aggravation was clear.

"No!" Ollie replied. "My point is, we're not going to stop trying! We're going to investigate. We're going to fight. We've already made progress..." Ollie trailed off, realizing how hopeless he sounded.

Roy realized it, too.

The boy turned masked eyes to Ollie, who didn't need to see past the lenses to know the anger in his apprentice's eyes. "We're not getting anything from anybody, and you know it! This is the only way to make sure that we get something useful!"

"Violence doesn't solve violence, Speedy," the blond growled, fingers gripping Roy's shoulder. "It just makes it harder to solve. Think about it. You rough him up, he's going to clam up. You can't do this to him." Or yourself.

The 'eyes' of the mask narrowed. "I think you're just scared," Roy sneered, reaching up to knock the hand away. "You don't know who's behind the attacks, and in spite of their deaths, of what their families have to go through, you insist on playing the 'good guy'-"

"Don't you think there's a reason for that, Roy?" Ollie nearly yelled, not noticing his slip. "Don't you think there's a reason that I'm acting like a human being, acting better than they are - because if I didn't, there's no line between me and them. And if you don't do the same, you'll spiral out of control until you're no better than those we fight."

"In the long run, that's not going to matter! Are your morals so important to you that you'll let innocent people die to stay righteous?" Roy narrowed his eyes and turned around, stalking away from his partner. "I'm not going to let the bad guys just walk over me. Even if it means stooping to their level, I'm going to do whatever it takes to stop people from suffering. Even if you won't."

Ollie started after Roy; "You can't do this, not to them, not to me, not to yourself. We don't need-"

Ollie stopped suddenly when he realized his protégé was gone.

And he probably wasn't coming back.

0-o-0-o-0

Roy stalked into an alley not too far from where he had just been. A parked car, probably from one of the residents of the apartments nearby, was an easy target for his anger. But as he leaned against the wall, frustration only grew within him. Ollie didn't seem to be able to look past right or wrong, that the ends just maybe did justify the means. The gray area in the middle was where he was aiming.

And as he shot one of his grapple arrows at the roof of the nearby apartment, he wondered if this would prove to be the breaking point in his and Ollie's already strained relationship.

0-o-0-o-0

Ollie slumped against a wall. What had he done?

He had just let his protégé, no, his partner, slip from his grasp. And why?

Because of morals.

Ollie turned and punched the wall. This was his own fault. Roy had been restless lately. It was obvious. He was quicker to anger, quicker to resort to violence.

But Ollie had ignored the signs because he didn't want to deal.

And now, he was paying the price.

Ollie raced in the direction Roy would have most likely gone. He needed to be there to back him up if - wait, scratch that - when Roy screwed up.

0-o-0-o-0

Roy walked through the back door of the nightclub, shades low over his eyes. It made things harder to see in the already dark area, but it covered his eyes in a more nondescript fashion than his mask. It was here that he knew the biggest drug lords in Star City could be found, and he didn't need his cover blown by Speedy or Roy Harper.

There was one man in the hallway, a janitor, and he nodded brusquely to Roy as the teen archer walked past. Roy gave him a tiny nod back, showing that he'd gotten the message.

He turned left at the T ahead, following the faint sounds of loud voices. They only got louder as he neared the end of the hall, and he knew he was close. He lifted his hand to knock at the very last door.

The sounds immediately stopped, and a slurred voice asked, "Password?"

"Horseshoes and hand grenades."

The door opened to reveal a tall, bald, tanned man. Roy got an incredulous look, but he was admitted.

Every eye in the room was facing him, and, internally, Roy was sweating. He'd always been the muscle to Ollie's act, but tonight, with the man elsewhere after their fight, it would be up to him to get the information and get out before something bad happened.

No one spoke as Roy took the empty seat.

"Where's your employer, Jack. Or was it Kevin? I can't remember," asked one of the men around the table. He was stringy, greasy-looking, but the bulge on his chest belied the timid appearance.

"Loki, this week," Roy said, smirking at the man. "Norse God. Shape shifter. It's fitting, isn't it?"

"Your employer, Loki," he snarled.

"Certainly, Mr. Flinn. Mr. Weston is a very busy man, I can assure you, and as his right-hand man, I am more than capable of meeting with you to discuss territory agreements."

"Gentlemen," the guard murmured, all trace of his slur gone. "Please. This area may not be secure. As for your assumption, Loki, this is not the yearly territory argument. We are here to discuss the upcoming threat."

"Threat?" Roy asked, feigning no knowledge of what the man meant. "Explain, Dawson. We have encountered no threats within our organization, and believe me, if there was something, we'd know about it."

"You must be the only organization this guy hasn't hit yet," Dawson said, passing a hand over his scalp. "He's working on taking down all of the drug dealers in this room. Last week, the west quarter of Hestlings' took a direct hit, and just tonight there was an attempted bust. Guy called the cops to the scene, but that's not usually his style. He's usually-"

"Right in the thick of things?" a new voice cut in dryly.

0-o-0-o-0

Ollie sat on a rooftop, dread clear on his masked face. He hadn't been able to track Roy down after the fight. Who knew where he could be now? Ollie understood the full weight of the issue. He had learned from mentoring Roy how much the boy's temper could affect his judgement. Whatever Roy was doing, it would definitely come back to bite him in the long run.

Whatever he was doing. That was the question.

Ollie tried to look at the situation from Roy's standpoint. If he were in Roy's shoes, if he had just broken off from his mentor, temporarily or permanently, what would be his first solo move?

He would try to prove he could do this on his own. He would try to take responsibility so that his mentor wouldn't, or couldn't. But what could he do?

Ollie jumped up. He knew where to find Roy.

0-o-0-o-0

Heart in his throat, Ollie pushed open the door to the nightclub, feeling the thrumming beat through the floor. The hallway was empty.

He stood in front of a familiar door a second later, hearing nothing within. There had been an emergency meeting tonight - he had gotten the text not an hour ago. At the time, though...

At the time, he had been fighting with Roy.

A haze of smoke hung in the air, and Ollie frowned. He pushed on the door, and it tipped to the floor.

The smoke was even thicker in here, and, after pushing a cloth over his nose and mouth, Ollie could see that it looked like a bomb had gone off. The table was laying on its side, chairs tipped and broken. The body of Dawson, the room's guard, was in the middle of a pile of broken wood and glass. The smell of sulphur lingered.

No drug dealers. No Roy.

0-o-0-o-0

Roy repressed the clichéd urge to groan as he found himself drawn to wakefulness. Using the training Batman had given him when put in a potential hostage situation, he made sure to keep his breathing deep and even and his eyes closed.

"None of that, now," a voice chided, and Roy felt something press into his side. Before he realized it, electricity coursed through him. He restrained himself to a small whimper, but only barely.

"I do believe we understand each other, don't we, Mr. Harper?"

Roy glared, but nodded. Resisting would only get him more time with what must have been a cattle prod.

"Good." A man moved into view, ski mask pulled over his face. A smirk was plastered on the part of the face Roy could see.

"I apologize for the mask, Mr. Harper, but I can't have you running to the police with a description, now can I? After your ransom is paid - which I'm certain Mr. Queen would gladly oblige me in for the safe return of his ward - you will be let go. But first, I have a few questions. What were you doing in that unsavory place? Surely you have better and more...expensive haunts."

"Rebel and all that," Roy muttered, slightly hoarse. How did that happen?

"Mr. Harper, there is more to it than that. Come now, we're alone. Don't worry about hiding your identity, Speedy."

0-o-0-o-0

Ollie paced. And paced. After getting a bottle of water, he paced some more.

This went on for a while.

Finally, while he was pacing, he heard a voice from behind him.

"What_ are_you doing?"

Ollie whirled. "Roy!" He rushed to the teen's side, grasping his shoulders. "Are you alright? You're not hurt, are you? What happened? Did they hurt you?"

"Yeah, Ollie, I'm fine." Roy wouldn't - no, couldn't - meet his mentor's eyes. "Ah, look, Ollie, I'm... I'm sorry. About what happened."

"I'm sorry, too. If I hadn't tried to stop you, if I hadn't... well, none of this would have happened."

The two of them stood, an awkward silence overtaking them.

Ollie knew that this marked the beginning of what was bound to be a much bigger battle, and cleared his throat. "So, uh, what happened, kid?"

Roy humorlessly gestured to the room. "I'm kinda assuming you got where I went, since you're here and all. Guy comes in, throws a flash-bang modified with KO-gas, and I wake up in a warehouse. He starts talking - usual spiel, you know, and I managed to get him frustrated enough to lose his cool, and, well, there's a reason that Joker stopped keeping important things in places with vats of toxic stuff."

But the story didn't sound complete. Ollie sighed, knowing that it would be useless to try and get more out of the teen in spite of their tentative truce. "Let's just get home and sleep, yeah?"

A grin barely cracked Roy's face. "Yeah."

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><p><strong>Th-th-that's all, folks! Yes, we took liberties with this - you'll notice an entire missing section? That's on purpose. We'd love to hear what theories you have on just what happened… *winks*<strong>


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